Self-serving MPs

CRUTATOR has never had any doubts that this Seventh Parliament whose end is nigh is teeming with rent-seeking, overrated blabbermouths and mere passengers whose core business is to fight for self-interests.

There is no need to force most of our MPs to take IQ tests for it is clear as the LCD’s downward spiral that they are below-average thinkers whose only claim to fame has been to be there when the jobs were being dished out.

A better half of these MPs stumbled into their jobs and have snored throughout their five-year term because they were out of their depth.

What else can you do when you find yourself in a job that demands brainpower but you have nothing substantial between your ears?

They wisely decided earlier into their terms that they can save themselves embarrassment if they kept their mouths zipped and eyes resolutely shut.

Whoever decided that a group of owls is called a parliament must have had our parliament in mind.

Y

ou don’t need the services of that potent Semonkong ngaka to understand why the quality of the debate in the National Assembly has normally resembled playground arguments.

Few in that parliament can logically follow the debates.

Few can understand the meaning and import of the laws they are busy churning out every month.

The majority either escapes into dreamland or just bunk the sessions altogether.

Little wonder then that the parliamentary sessions and committees are dominated by a few MPs whose only plus is to have made a little effort to understand why they draw a salary every year.

They don’t need to have read Benny and Betty to be kingmakers in the parliament.

Seriously, why should they bother understanding the intricacies of law and governance when they are surrounded by men and women who think a tomato is a vegetable?

Although they are wet behind the ears when it comes to parliamentary affairs they happen to know when to work hard and when to go into a deep slumber.

Last Friday was the day our MPs were fully awake and worked their socks off.

They were all alert because they wanted to discuss their pensions.

Scrutator wasn’t there but she is told that it was a day when even MPs who have not uttered anything sensible in the past five years suddenly found their voice, shouted their heads off and swore like sailors.

Some were so disgusted that they spat like an Indian in down-town Mumbai.

They were as mad as hell because their pensions and gratuities had not been reviewed.

There was obvious method in their madness.

These are men and women just about to be jobless.

They wanted to harvest from the state coffers one more time so they could live happily ever after.

That is why it is understandable that for the first time in many moons the opposition and ruling party MPs united to form a strong battalion to push this “bread and butter issue”.

For once they had found an issue that brought them together and made them forget their political differences.

Their knack for hunting in packs like jackals when it comes to their own interests — salaries, pensions, interest-free loans and per diems — doesn’t bother Scrutator that much.

After all, most of them would be pounding the streets of Maseru jobless were it not for that job in parliament.

In fact, most of them cannot be employed because they already have bucket lists or they are just unemployable.

What gets Scrutator’s goat is their misdirected belief that every other parliamentary business must stop until their thirst for more benefits has been quenched.

On Friday their beef over pensions was considered so “urgent” that a discussion on the budget had to be suspended.

Parliament Speaker Ntlhoi Motsamai tried to persuade the agitated MPs to get on with the business of the day but she was told this was a matter of life and death.

The Seventh Parliament was speaking for itself, again.

It was fighting its corner once, again.

The MPs wanted their bread slices with thick layers of butter on bother sides.

They needed something to maintain the rotund cheeks and the potbellies they have acquired since they came into parliament.

Scrutator remembers that when the civil servants were given a miserly three percent salary increase this year the MPs went on voicemail.

When senior citizens were given a paltry M50 increase on their pensions not a single MP raised a finger.

When the amount allocated for tertiary education sponsorship was not even inflation adjusted in this year’s budget the MPs remained mute.

You might have noticed that we are already starring a drought this year but this parliament has said absolutely nothing about it.

There is a crisis in the judiciary yet our MPs behave like all is normal.

Their sheer irresponsibility is mindboggling.

The only time they are raved up is when they are fighting for themselves.

It would have been better if these politicians worked throughout the year but they don’t.

They have more breaks than any other worker in this country but they earn more than people whose jobs require professional qualifications.

These MPs have Easter breaks, Christmas breaks and winter breaks yet they do nothing but warm the benches and do other nasty things to them.

And don’t you dare bank on the ballot to get some of those good-for-nothings from parliament because the electorate remains largely naïve and unmoved by the politics of policies and ideas.

O

n a totally different but hilarious matter, Scrutator did not know whether to cry or laugh after learning that Mafa Ramakau, the assistant coach for Lesotho Correctional Service, had missed his connecting flight to Uganda last Thursday.

“I had gone to buy some cigarettes,” was Ramakau’s response when asked about the incident this week.

When he came back he found the plane already on the runway.

He must learn that a plane is not like a four-plus-one taxi he catches at Stopong anytime he wants.

That is what happens when the closest you have ever been to a plane is a kite you made when you were a boy.

Kekekekeke: Scrutator is laughing her head off like the South Africans celebrating Zambia’s win at the African Nations Cup tournament as if they don’t have a team of their own. Pathetic!

About Author

Lesotho's widely read newspaper, published every Thursday and distributed throughout the country and in some parts of South Africa.
Contact us today: News: editor@lestimes.co.ls Advertising: marketing@lestimes.co.ls Telephone: +266 2231 5356